Drinkin'

Not far from where I live rests a local watering hole where I occasionally sit for a mid-day drink. The bar is called Club Nautica. Translated roughly: Boat Club. But the last place any of Club Nautica’s clientele have ventured lately is onto the deck of a yacht.

Club Nautica is where dreams go to die. Or where dreams long dead have washed up onto the shore of the Black Marina, picked their pockets, and moseyed into the open-air Club for a Dewar’s and coconut juice.

About once every week I walk the two blocks to the Club. I stroll in with a book. The idea that I can read in a bar is as ridiculous to me as it is to the clientele of Club Nautica, who stare at my book with wonderment. See, I need the book to justify getting a beer at 3:30 in the afternoon. Going to get some reading done, I tell myself. I never open the book in the bar, but it’s a perfect beard. I’m out of place at the Club with a book in my hand. Just a stranger to them. Perhaps a studious youngin’ who is studying barflies for his latest academic pursuits.

“One Heineken please.” I say to the ancient Puerto Rican bartender. Two dollars are exchanged. I leave silver for a tip.

Taking a seat in the corner, book situated under my arm, I proceed with my true reason for coming to Club Nautica: the people watching. Like no other bar I’ve ever been, this place stinks of despair. A handful of expats circle the lone pool table. Others line the bar ordering drinks in thick mid-western accents. All wear shorts and sleeveless shirts. Some don’t don shoes. They talk, but none have a conversation. I listen closer.

“Hell of a stick you got there kid,” a grayed, grizzly-voiced man says to one of the bar’s younger patrons playing pool.

Another patron quickly jumps in:

“John, you ain’t an Idaho tatter or even a California tatter. John, You’re a COMMON-TATER!”

Nobody laughs. The pool balls knock against the rail.

The younger player looks at the lone TV in the bar. “Is this shit CSI or something,” he wonders aloud. Again, nobody answers.

It’s Law and Order, I think to myself.

The afternoon continues like this. I sip through two Heinekens and listen to a skinny, leathered man talk about leaving his wife. The man at the stool next to him nods often but doesn’t take his eyes off the pool game. The Puerto Rican bartender stands in the corner of the bar and surveys the scene from a chair.

There’s a line in Nelson Algren’s, “The Man with the Golden Arm” that talks about a cat that lives in a bar. The owner knows that once the cat has purred around someone, that someone is gone, no longer a part time drinker but a full-blown booze junkie, their life lost to the drink.

“’N when you hear that one purr you’re through,” the bartender explains. “That one keeps track of how many shots you put down every day. So long as you’re just a sociable drinker he don’t purr. But when you take the one that puts you on the lush for keeps, then he knows you’ll never get off the bottle your whole life. N’ he purrs once. And he purred at me and he will purr at you.”

“When I was twelve my stepmom took me in the shower and started workin’ real fast,” the grizzly-voiced common-tater jokes. “And I said, ‘Damn mommy, slow down and romance it a bit.’” He chuckles heavily and looks around. People laugh, but not at his joke.

The cat purred in Club Nautica years ago. They all know it. And they probably know there’s no use in fighting the cat’s purr. Who’s to blame um’? We’ll all hear a cat purr someday, and the warm, drunken air of Club Nautica seems as good a place as any. What makes our cat’s purr any holier than theirs?

Another one, I say to the bartender. At least that’s what I wanted to say, but left the Club instead. I can't exactly remember what happened. My memory's a little fuzzy in this heat.